1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for examining biological material. In particular, the invention relates to providing a simplified and highly flexible architecture for the analysis of data from scanned biological probe arrays, in particular arrays designed for a specialized purpose. To effectively address the specialized needs of emerging technology it is important to tailor the analysis tools so that the most effective and efficient methods are applied to data generated from the particular technology in an intuitive and easily manageable format.
2. Related Art
Synthesized nucleic acid probe arrays, such as Affymetrix GeneChip® probe arrays, and spotted probe arrays, have been used to generate unprecedented amounts of information about biological systems. For example, the GeneChip® Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 Array available from Affymetrix, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., is comprised of one microarray containing 1,300,000 oligonucleotide features covering more than 47,000 transcripts and variants that include 38,500 well characterized human genes. Other examples of GeneChip® arrays are targeted to provide data aimed at more specialized areas such as what may be referred to as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) provided by the Affymetrix 10K, 100K, or 500K GeneChip® Probe Arrays, or all exon arrays that specialize in the analysis of alternative splicing events. Analysis of data from such microarrays may lead to the development of new drugs and new diagnostic tools.